You’re listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the world’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for people with cancer. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so the data described here may change as research progresses. Many common cancer treatments can temporarily or permanently affect a woman’s fertility, which is the ability to have children. In today’s podcast, Dr. Karen Lisa Smith shares highlights from her article from the 2018 ASCO Educational Book, “Advances in Fertility Preservation for Young Women With Cancer.” Dr. Smith is a medical oncologist at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Published annually, the Educational Book is a collection of articles written by ASCO Annual Meeting speakers and oncology experts. Each volume highlights the most compelling research and developments across the multidisciplinary fields of oncology. ASCO would like to thank Dr. Smith for discussing this topic.  Dr. Smith: Hello, my name is Dr. Karen Lisa Smith from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In this podcast, I will be sharing some key points from my 2018 ASCO Educational Book article titled, “Advances in Fertility Preservation for Young Women With Cancer.” Each year, over 30,000 young women are diagnosed with cancer in the United States. The most common types of cancers in young women are breast and gynecologic cancers, blood cancers, sarcomas, brain tumors, and colorectal cancer. Many women, especially in Western countries like the United States, are choosing to become pregnant later in life. As a result, young women diagnosed with cancer may not have completed their families at the time of diagnosis. Unfortunately, young women with cancer often require treatments that can make their future chances of childbearing low. For example, chemotherapy is toxic to the ovaries and radiation or surgery on reproductive organs carries a risk of future infertility. Additionally, some long-term treatments, such as hormonal therapy for breast cancer, require a woman to avoid becoming pregnant for years. How to address infertility in cancer survivors is an important clinical issue. The majority of young female cancer survivors report reproductive concerns and many desire children. Pregnancy after cancer treatment does not appear to increase the risk of cancer coming back.  However, young female cancer survivors become pregnant at lower rates than unaffected women in the general population. There is good news for young cancer survivors who wish to start a family. Recent advances in reproductive health care allow doctors to help their patients preserve fertility before cancer treatment begins. Fertility preservation is safe and can often be accomplished without a significant delay in cancer care, especially if fertility goals are addressed early and interested patients are referred to fertility specialists during the course of their cancer treatment planning. There are 2 main types of assisted reproductive the techniques that fertility specialists can use to preserve fertility in young women with cancer. The best established method of fertility preservation is embryo cryopreservation.  Women who use this method first receive hormonal medications for several days to stimulate the ovaries.  Next, they undergo a procedure to remove the eggs from the ovaries.  In the lab, the eggs are fertilized using sperm from a